How El Niño—& Climate Change—Kill People with Virus Epidemics

Using mathematical modeling, researchers suggest weather and warming created the “perfect storm” that drove the Zika outbreak in 2016.

Carried by mosquitoes, Zika is a Flavivirus first identified in Uganda in 1947 by scientists conducting research on yellow fever. Zika forest, the location where the microbe was discovered, lends its name to the virus. Found commonly in mosquitoes and ticks, flaviviruses are responsible for a great deal of suffering from the death and diseases that they cause, including Zika, yellow fever, Dengue fever, and West Nile virus, among others.